The Clique of Gold, Emile Gaboriau [if you liked this book .txt] 📗

was not sincere, what did she risk? She who had not feared death itself need not fear any thing else. Lucretia’s dagger will always protect a brave woman’s liberty.

But still, in spite of the pressing need she had for rest, her promise kept her awake for the greater part of the night; for she passed in her mind once more over the whole lamentable story of her sufferings, and asked herself what she might confess to, and what she ought to withhold from the old dealer. Had he not already discovered, by the address of one of her letters, that she was the daughter of Count Ville-Handry? And just that she would have liked to keep him from knowing. On the other hand, was it not foolish to ask the advice of a man to whom we will not confess the whole truth?

“I must tell him all,” she said, “or nothing.” And, after a moment’s reflection, she added,—“I will tell him all, and keep nothing back.” She was in this disposition, when in the morning, about nine o’clock, Papa Ravinet reappeared in her room. He looked very pale, the old man; and the expression of his face, and the tone of his voice, betrayed an emotion which he could scarcely control, together with deep anxiety.

“Well?” he asked forgetting in his preoccupation to inquire even how the poor girl had passed the night.

She shook her head sadly, and replied, pointing to a chair,—

“I have made up my mind, sir; sit down, please, and listen to me.” The old dealer had been fully convinced that Henrietta would come to that; but he had not hoped for it so soon. He could not help exclaiming, “At last!” and intense, almost delirious joy shone in his eyes. Even this joy seemed to be so unnatural, that the young girl was made quite uncomfortable by it. Fixing her eyes upon the old man with all the power of observation of which she was capable, she said,—

“I am fully aware that what I am about to do is almost unparalleled in rashness. I put myself, to a certain extent, absolutely in your power, sir,—the power of an utter stranger, of whom I am told I have every thing to fear.”

“O miss!” he declared, “believe me”—

But she interrupted him, saying with great solemnity,—

“I think, if you were to deceive me, you would be the meanest and least of men. I rely upon your honor.”

And then in a firm voice she began the account of her life, from that fatal evening on which her father had said to her,—

“I have resolved, my daughter, to give you a second mother.”

The old dealer had taken a seat facing Henrietta, and listened, fixing his eyes upon her face as if to enter into her thoughts, and to anticipate her meaning. His face was all aglow with excitement, like the face of a gambler who is watching the little white ball that is to make him a rich man or a beggar. It looked almost as if he had foreseen the terrible communication she was making, and was experiencing a bitter satisfaction at finding his presentiments confirmed,—

As Henrietta was proceeding, he would murmur now and then,—

“That is so! Yes, of course that had to come next.”

And all these people whose abominable intrigues Henrietta was explaining to him were apparently better known to him than to her, as if he had frequently been in contact with them, or even lived in their intimacy. He gave his judgment on each one with amazing assurance, as the occasion presented itself, saying,—

“Ah! There I recognize Sarah and Mrs. Brian.”

Or,—

“Sir Thorn never does otherwise.”

Or, again,—

“Yes, that is all over Maxime de Brevan.”

And, according to the different phases of the account, he would laugh bitterly and almost convulsively, or he would break out in imprecations.

“What a trick!” he murmured with an accent of deep horror, “what an infernal snare!”

At another point he turned deadly pale, and almost trembled on his chair, as if he were feeling ill, and were about to fall. Henrietta was telling him at that moment, from Daniel’s recital, the circumstances under which M. de Kergrist had died, and Malgat had disappeared,—that poor cashier who had left such an immense deficit behind; who had been condemned to penal servitude; and whose body the police believed to have found in a wood near Paris. But, as soon as the young girl had finished, he rose all of a sudden, and cried out in a formidable voice,—

“I have them now, the wretches! this time I have them!”

And, breaking down under his excessive excitement, he sank into his chair, covering his face with his hands. Henrietta was dumfounded; she looked aghast at the old man, in whom she now placed all her hopes. Already, the night before, she had had some suspicions that he was not what he seemed to be; now she was quite sure. But who was he? She had nothing to go by to solve that riddle.

This only she thought she saw clearly, that Sarah Brandon, Mrs. Brian, and M. Thomas Elgin, as well as M. de Brevan, had at some time or other come in personal contact with Papa Ravinet, and that he hated them mortally.

“Unless he should try to deceive me,” she thought, not having quite shaken off all doubts yet.

He had in the meantime mastered his emotion, and was regaining all his composure.

“Let no one, henceforth, deny Providence!” he exclaimed. “Ah! fools and idiots alone can do so. M. de Brevan had every reason to think that this house would keep the secret of his crime as safe as the grave, and so brought you here. And here it happens I must chance to live,—of all men, I,—and he remain unaware of it! By a kind of miracle we are brought together under the same roof,—you, the daughter of Count Ville-Handry, and I, one after the other, without knowing each other; and, at the very moment when this Brevan is about to triumph, Providence brings us together, and this meeting ruins him!”

His voice betrayed his fierce joy at approaching vengeance; his sallow cheeks flushed up; and his eyes shone brilliantly.

“For M. de Brevan was triumphing last night. The woman Chevassat, his confederate, had watched you, and noticing your preparations for committing suicide, had said to him, ‘Rejoice! at last we shall get rid of her.’”

Henrietta shuddered, and stammered out,—

“Is it possible?”

Then the old man, looking at her half surprised, said,—

“What! after all you have seen of M. de Brevan, you have never suspected him of meditating your death?”

“Why, yes! I sometimes thought so.”

“Well, this time you were right, madam. Ah! you do not know your enemies yet. But I